While I was a guest on a radio talk show interview featuring my book Handle with Prayer, a caller shared an inspiring story. “When my daughter was scheduled for surgery, I asked my prayer group to pray for a positive outcome to the surgery,” he recounted. “At the prayer group someone asked, ‘Why accept the surgery as a done deal?  Let’s pray that your daughter be healed without the surgery.’  So we prayed for a natural healing. When I took my daughter for her next exam, the doctor informed me that her condition had cleared up and she no longer needed the surgery.”

Sometimes when we pray or set goals, we make assumptions about what is available to us. We plot our route based on what we think we can get or on the options that others tell us are available to us. If you are not altogether satisfied with the options before you, it might be time to step back and question your assumption about the options. Very often if you think or pray outside the box, you will find vast terrains that you did not know were available to you based on your previous level of thinking.

A problem may come to you not so much because of the obvious issue before you, but to stimulate you to think more deeply than you have been thinking. Albert Einstein noted that we can never solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created it. In the light, problems exist specifically to move us to a higher level of thinking. Then the solution becomes obvious, and we have attained a new rung of consciousness that we can apply to all future issues and decisions.

The story above does not mean you should not get surgery. It means that you should not settle for a solution unless it takes into account options grander than the ones you have noticed.

What options may be available to you that are bigger than the ones you have been considering?

I will not settle for a solution less than one that truly answers the question.